What's Your Status? (25 page)

Isabel Ryan

is having a very good day;)

Female

17 years old

Hartfield, CT

United States

Status:
Single

Song:
Take My Breath Away/Berlin

Quote:
“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”

—Margaret Thatcher

Isabel Ryan’s Blog

Prom Update! Just 3 days to go!! It’ll “take your breath away”!

We’ve secured the Lily Ballroom for the prom! It’s going to be great!

I h8 smug, self-congratulatory people.

Family. You can always count on them!

About Me

Currently putting the finishing touches on the prom!

Music:

Mahler, Chopin, Mozart, Stravinsky.

Movies:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
,
8½
, anything by Bergman.

Television:

Television? Please.

Books:

Proust. But only in the original French.

Idols:

Robert Pattinson, Jude Law, Orlando Bloom, Daniel Radcliffe!

Education:
High school

Graduated:
Next year

Isabel’s Comments

Displaying 4 of 4

Zach Baylor
Um, hi, Isabel. So I guess we’re all set for the prom. So did you want me to pick you up? Or should we just meet there?

Beatrice
Hey BFF! Just wanted to see how your day was ;) Call me latah, kay?

KitKat
Of course I don’t mind that you’re in the same hotel that we are! There’s enough room for all of us, right?

Anonymous
SO looking forward to Saturday. You have no idea. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

I looked up at Kittson from Brian’s laptop. “You’re on here,” I said, surprised, as I passed it on. “You’re in her Top 8.”

“I know,” Kittson said, patting her slice of pizza with a paper towel. Once we’d agreed to her revenge scheme, she’d lost her scary demeanor and had helped herself to dinner. “I’m sure she thought it would make her look good…you know, the prom chairs getting along.”

“But you’re not,” Ginger clarified.

Kittson shook her head. “Well, especially not now. And you should see the kind of stuff she’s posted on my blog.”

“Totally harsh,” Turtell agreed.

“I don’t see how this helps,” Mark said as he looked at the profile.

“It’s incredibly helpful,” Sarah said, looking at it with him. “You just have to know how to read it.”

“And you do?” Mark asked.

“Sure,” Sarah said. “You can see that she has a date to the prom, this Zach Baylor guy. But he’s not her boyfriend and he doesn’t seem that excited about it, so I’d say it’s a date of convenience. Also, she’s a cultural snob but has a major thing for British guys.”

Kittson looked at Sarah with respect. “Nicely done,” she said.

“Thanks,” Sarah said, trying to appear nonchalant but clearly thrilled.

I had scribbled out a new plan on a Putnam Pizza napkin, thinking back to all the James Bonds I had read recently. It looked as though incorporating the revenge element might actually make the crown stealing easier. But it meant that we were going to have to be at the Hartfield prom as much as possible, and we needed someone on the inside. Someone who could be close to Isabel all night…. I looked up, getting an idea. “Mark, did you ever get a prom date?”

“No,” he said with a kind of wounded dignity. “I’ve come to terms with going alone. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it.”

“Not at all,” I said. I smiled, tapping my pen on the table. “Okay,” I said as I looked down at my napkin. “Let’s figure this out.”

An hour later, I flopped back on the couch and stared at the whiteboard in front of me. When things had expanded way beyond my napkin, Brian had dragged out the board his father used to record his groundings on. Every inch of it was now covered with the Plan.

WARDROBE: Ginger

FRENCH/SMALLNESS: Lisa

LOOKOUT: Brian

TECHNOLOGY: Kittson

COORDINATION: Schuyler—keeping track of Putnam prom, Madison—go between both proms

COMMUNICATION: USE STATUS Q!!

Thursday night: Operation Mata Hari—Sarah, Mad, Dave, pizza

Friday: Review of the plan

Saturday: PROM

Meet at Dave’s—7 p.m.

Enter hotel at 8 p.m.—2 vehicles—limo, van

Embedded in Hartfield prom: Sarah, Mark, Mad (floating)

Dave—in Hartfield prom, with cart

^*
Find out location of crown. Get it AWAY from Isabel. Transport to secure location via Dave’s cart.

10:25—CROWN REPLACEMENT (Lisa, Mad, Schuyler) Put real crown in place of H. Kitty.

10:30—Dr. Trent sees that Hayes crown is fine. (fingers Xed)

10:35—Don’t Cry For Me, Hartfield (Sarah)

10:40—Putnam High queen crowned with Hayes crown (Kittson)

“Take my name down,” Kittson said, pointing at the bottom of the whiteboard. “We don’t know that I’m going to be the queen. And it’s bad luck to put it there.” I got up and wiped Kittson’s name from the board.

“I think that bad luck’s already happening,” Sarah said.

“Which means we don’t need to add to it any more, am I right?” Kittson asked. She swung her legs over Turtell’s lap and kissed his cheek. “Are you okay with this, baby?” she asked.

“I just don’t know,” Brian said, shaking his head, causing Turtell to glare at him.

“I think Kittson was talking to Glen,” I told him. “But what is it, Brian?”

“Well,” Brian said, frowning at the board, “I understand how this will work—I think—
if
everything goes according to plan. But what if something goes wrong?”

“What could go wrong?” Dave asked.

“What
couldn’t
go wrong?” Lisa muttered. I turned to look at her, surprised, since she had been the one to convince everyone to get on board. “
Je suis desolée,
but I’m with Brian. This is only going to work if there isn’t a wild card.”

I didn’t really have a solution for this, except for all of us to start praying that that wouldn’t happen. “Well, there won’t be,” I said as confidently as I could.

“Why are we using Status Q updates to communicate?” Dave asked, frowning. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better—and less public—to text?”

I shook my head. Using the updates to communicate was integral to the plan. “We’re not going to have time,” I said. “There are ten of us, after all. I’ll set up one Q account for all of us to follow so we can get alerts. It’s going to be much faster to update your status once, so we can all see it, as opposed to texting nine people.”

Mark raised his hand again.

“Seriously?” Turtell asked him. “This isn’t home-room, dude.”

Mark turned crimson and sank a little lower in his seat. “Sorry, Turtell. I mean, Glen. Sir. I was just wondering why we’re not worried about Isabel telling on us. If everything works out and all, and we get our crown
back and use it to crown Kittson—or whoever,” he added quickly, as Kittson frowned at him, “how do we know that she’s not going to go to Dr. Trent and tell on us?”

“Because then she’d have to admit what she did,” Schuyler said. She looked around at all of us. “Right? Because then to get us in trouble, she’d have to admit that she blackmailed me and took the crown.”